Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin; Written by Himself. [Vol. 2 of 2]
With his Most Interesting Essays, Letters, and Miscellaneous Writings; Familiar, Moral, Political, Economical, and Philosophical, Selected with Care from All His Published Productions, and Comprising Whatever Is Most Entertaining and Valuable to the General Reader

By Benjamin Franklin

Page 31

earth toanother, the nearest and safest way, and in the shortest time.

By help of this science the architects take their just measures for thestructure of buildings, as private houses, churches, palaces, ships,fortifications, &c.

By its help engineers conduct all their works, take the situation andplan of towns, forts, and castles, measure their distances from oneanother, and carry their measures into places that are only accessibleto the eye.

From hence also is deduced that admirable art of drawing sundials on anyplace, howsoever situate, and for any part of the world, to point outthe exact time of the day, the sun's declination, altitude, amplitude,azimuth, and other astronomical matters.

By geometry the surveyor is directed how to draw a map of any country,to divide his lands, and to lay down and plot any piece of ground, andthereby discover the area in acres, rods, and perches; the gauger isinstructed how to find the capacities or solid contents of all kinds ofvessels, in barrels, gallons, bushels, &c.; and the measurer isfurnished with rules for finding the areas and contents of superficesand solids, and casting up all manner of workmanship. All these, andmany more useful arts, too many to be enumerated here, wholly dependupon the aforesaid sciences, namely, arithmetic and geometry.

This science is descended from the infancy of the world, the inventorsof which were the first propagators of human kind, as Adam, Noah,Abraham, Moses, and divers others.

There has not been any science so much esteemed and honoured as this ofthe mathematics, nor with so much industry and vigilance become the careof great men, and laboured in by the potentates of the world, namely,emperors, kings, princes, &c.

_Mathematical demonstrations_ are a logic of as much or more use thanthat commonly learned at schools, serving to a just formation of themind, enlarging its capacity, and strengthening it so as to render thesame capable of exact reasoning, and discerning truth from falsehood inall occurrences, even subjects not mathematical. For which reason it issaid the Egyptians, Persians, and Lacedaemonians seldom elected any newkings but such as had some knowledge in the mathematics; imagining thosewho had not men of imperfect judgments, and unfit to rule and govern.

Though Plato's censure, that those who did not understand the 117thproposition of the 13th book of Euclid's Elements ought not to be rankedamong rational creatures, was unreasonable and unjust, yet to give a manthe character of universal learning, who is destitute of a competentknowledge in the mathematics, is no

Text Comparison with The Complete Works in Philosophy, Politics and Morals of the late Dr. Benjamin Franklin, Vol. 3 [of 3]

That the parliament of England is at a great distance, subject to
be misinformed and misled by such governors and councils, whose
united interests might probably secure them against the effect of any
complaint from hence.

The author of the Letter, who must be every way best able to support
his own sentiments, will, I hope, excuse me, if I seem officiously
to interfere; when he considers, that the spirit of patriotism, like
other qualities good and bad, is catching; and that his long silence
since the Remarks appeared has made us despair of seeing the subject
farther discussed by his masterly hand.

A reader of the Remarks may be apt to say, if this writer would
have us restore Canada, on principles of moderation, how can we,
consistent with those principles, retain Guadaloupe, which he
represents of so much greater value!--I will endeavour to explain
this, because by doing it I shall have an opportunity of showing the
truth and good sense of the answer to the interested application I
have just supposed: The author then is only apparently and not really
inconsistent with himself.

The English inhabitants, though numerous, are extended over a large
tract of land, five hundred leagues in length on the sea shore;
and although some of their trading towns are thick settled, their
settlements in the country towns must be at a distance from each
other: besides, that in a new country where lands are cheap, people
are fond of acquiring large tracts to themselves; and therefore in
the out-settlements, they must be more remote: and as the people that
move out are generally poor, they sit down either where they can
easiest procure land, or soonest raise a subsistence.

There can be no country
or nation existing, in which there will not be some people so
circumstanced, as to find it hard to gain a livelihood; people who
are not in the way of any profitable trade, and with whom money is
scarce, because they have nothing to give in exchange for it; and
it is always in the power of a small number to make a great clamour.

The
people, by this means, are not imposed on either by the merchant or
mechanic: if the merchant demands too much profit on imported shoes,
they buy of the shoe-maker; and if he asks too high a price, they
take them of the merchant: thus the two professions are checks on
each other.